No torches, epithets involved — when racist intent is official

Published 4:43 pm, Thursday, September 7, 2017

Photo: JOHN DAVENPORT /San Antonio Express-News

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Protesters gather July 10 outside of the John H. Wood, Jr. Federal Courthouse during a demonstration about suppression of the minority vote due to the redrawing of districts. Judges have ruled Texas’ maps discriminatory and that’s now on appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. less

Protesters gather July 10 outside of the John H. Wood, Jr. Federal Courthouse during a demonstration about suppression of the minority vote due to the redrawing of districts. Judges have ruled Texas’ maps ... more

Photo: JOHN DAVENPORT /San Antonio Express-News

No torches, epithets involved — when racist intent is official

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In a sense, we are indeed post-racial — images of torch-bearing neo-Nazis, white nationalists and supremacists notwithstanding.

Yes, there are more of these n-word spouting, Jew-hating, Mexican-insulting, gun-toting folks than most of us would like. You may disagree, but I believe they are a fringe minority and are, at least, out in the open. That means they can be faced (nonviolently) and denounced out in the open.

But what do we do when faced with the distinct possibility that, though the epithets are absent, another kind of racism is still virulently present? Once removed but akin to the Jim Crow laws of the not-so-distant past.

Here is a disturbing conclusion possible to be derived from recent events: big, meaningful parts of our government act with racist intent, though they call it something else.

The evidence is there in black and white: several court rulings now that either say it outright or point to “intentional discrimination” by the Texas Legislature in crafting its voter ID law and in drawing congressional and state House redistricting maps. And the evidence will be there even if another court disagrees.

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It’s there in black and white in the U.S. Department of Justice’s reversal on such cases. Before, it fought Texas on such matters; now, it backs the state, as if Texas’ long history of denying access at the polls and denying fair representation for minorities is not also in the black and white of official writs spanning over more than a century.

“Intentional discrimination.” Is this not in that so-called “textbook definition” of racism?

It’s there in black and white in the president’s pardon of an Arizona sheriff who built his reputation on harassing, intimidating and demeaning Maricopa County’s Latino population, putting many of them in his infamous “tent city,” which he once openly termed a “concentration camp.”

Are not Joe Arpaio’s actions and Trump’s clear endorsement of them also in that textbook definition?

I understand the emotional tumult that marching white supremacists spark. But why no such tumult when courts find that these textbook definitions have been at work in our institutions? Is this not even worse given that it is more impactful — and official?

An educated guess, likely none of the players in these decisions view themselves as racists or anti-Semites.

But it’s said that actions speak loudly. And those words — “intentional discrimination” — are as if blaring from a bull horn. The finding is based on court analyses of legislative process in which Texas knowingly gored minorities — in the name of partisan advantage in gerrymandering; with voter ID, it approved forms of ID it knew many minorities were likely not to have. And Trump’s Justice Department says that’s all perfectly acceptable.

And that presidential pardon didn’t occur in a vacuum. Arpaio’s actions against Latinos have been in headlines, in court documents and bragged about out of his own mouth. The courts have said these were intentional and unconstitutional infringements of rights.

No torches in the middle of night were involved, but all nonetheless bearing the official imprimatur of the government — allegedly the government of Americans of color, too.

Here’s how it works when racist intent is official: the damage is inflicted; if we are lucky, it is reversed in the courts; then appealed; replicated in the Legislature; challenged again; reversed by the courts and … repeat ad nauseum. No real penalties exacted and no immediate solutions in sight.

The solution, of course, is the ballot box. Not coincidentally, however, this is an avenue undermined by the very instruments Texas officially employs to keep certain people in power and others out. That would be voter ID, restrictions on third-party voter registration, gerrymandering and underfunded public schools — because income and education increase the chances that you vote. All done officially and, to the naked eye, benignly.

That intolerant torch-bearing yahoo deserves denunciation. But so do the people who make it all official and do so while saying they represent you and me.